A Flood & A Garden (Metrofinál)

We played two stations and two bodhisattvas each. This really made it so everyone was "on" almost all the time, which was a little exhausting, especially when we clumped up at stations, but we got through quite a bit I felt. The game is definitely very light on rules and guidelines which I can see being difficult if you're not feeling particularly creative. I had a good time but would probably enjoy playing it again with four or five people so I'd have a little more time to enjoy the story and come up with something good.

I also felt like our game was much more focused on our characters and their reactions to the stations than actually actively trying to find Those Who Come in the Night and I think part of that had to do with not being given much time to think and plan out what might happen next.

We visited 5 out of 6 stations and brought forth 2 of the Night Visitors.

Some highlights:In the flooded Diagonal station, The Assassin gave a family a meal of burgers with fries. The burgers were made of different types of meat and consequently, the father turned into a goat and the son into a lamb. The mother was confused/weirded out and later, when we tried to convince her that she had to sacrifice them, she turned into a demon and leapt out of the styrofoam boat into the depths.In the time-stopped Universidad station, a garden is grown and the young girl that is cut by the Rosebearer with his rose sword bleeds violet and when he offers the sword to her, the sword flickers between a multitude of flowers.

I got back and forth on what I think a sweet spot for number of players is for this game. With 3 you're definitely on ALL THE TIME (not necessarily a bad thing :P). I think 4 is pretty reasonable. With 5, I feel like I'm waiting a lot. It can be very easy to sideline one player for 4 scenes so they are only active 1/5 of the time, which is always a bummer. I've never played it with more than 5 and I'm hesitant to do so because of the division of screen time.

I want to play this with the full complement of eight sometime, with a whole afternoon and plenty of snacks and a table-sized copy of the map, or even better, constructing the map using Brio trains or something.

Three was tough. I would not recommend it. It's a different kind of "always-on" than, say, Shock, because at least in Shock you spend every third scene out of the action. In our game, we only got a couple of scenes of rest total because we started going to stations where two players had characters. It was pretty exhausting. Could've also been all the Dayquil I was on.

I've played the game with eight before, albeit at a regular meetup (and no snacks). It was very interesting. Admittedly, I spent a long, long time just sitting and listening, but there was something magical about the moment when someone came to my station. Waiting for your turn became a delicious anticipation. Hearing the narrative expand in multiple directions contributed to the dreamlike feel of the game.

And this may sound weird, but it was also very fascinating to watch the different interactions that took place. With eight players, it was possible to go an entire round without any of the same two people interacting. It was kind of like "how will these two people talk to each other?" every time a new pair occurred. I'm not sure I'm explaining that very well, but I guess I'm saying that it was good people-watchin' times.

We're about:

Try new games, meet new people, and find out what story games are all about! We play roleplaying games like Fiasco, Shock, Polaris and Microscope that encourage everyone at the table to participate creatively.

Everybody's welcome! It doesn't matter if you've never tried story games before or never played roleplaying games at all! Just bring your brain and a good attitude and come try it out!